


A Question of the Proper Good

by MabelOverture



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt Riza Hawkeye, Hurt/Comfort, My Fav Kind and I Won't Apologize, One Shot, Politics, Post-Promised Day, Protective Roy Mustang, Royai - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27070519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MabelOverture/pseuds/MabelOverture
Summary: A town has been wounded by the corruption of the previous government. Although it's known they have no trust or faith in the Amestrian military, the true depth of their hate becomes starkly clear when Captain Hawkeye intervenes in a dangerous mob.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 12
Kudos: 62





	A Question of the Proper Good

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all bitches thought I was GONE huh! Yeah same. It's been awhile. I've missed writing so, so much. Writing this made me feel a little rusty, but really good all the same. I've equally missed the high I'd get from reading about how people enjoyed what I post. That's half the fun of publicly publishing these little one shots. 
> 
> If you can get a guarantee out of anything, it's that my writing will always include Riza in over her head. 
> 
> I'd say I hope the fandom is still around to read, but we all know it's not going anywhere.
> 
> I'm glad to be back <3

The humble houses were made of clay and stone, their architecture a marriage between adobe, western, and perhaps a little Old Age. The town was called Potamamie. It was a modest place home to several thousand residents and as Riza had heard by rumor, a pack of wild coyotes. It was once unassuming.  _ Warm and safe _ , a local woman had described it with a skin of sorrow. The sort of place families would want to raise their children, or settle in at when they became elderly. Once, it was all of these things. The town Riza walked in was now broken. Wounded and bitter. The image of a town long dead.

Riza had never heard of Potamamie before - most people hadn’t. Afterall, it was a self-effacing place far removed from the more populated and popular regions. Yet still, a man by the name of Gregor Fare had wanted something  _ more _ than what Potamamie had to offer - what exactly, nobody could ever know. Fame? Power? To say that he’d been “friends”, or more realistically a pawn, with once fabled homunculi? Or perhaps he just simply wanted blood and chaos.

Gregor Fare tied a noose after the Promised Day to evade war criminal charges. He had been the mayor.

A sigh was released from Riza’s mouth, but it only made her chest feel all the more taut. Her boots clicked gently against the narrow cobblestone road. 

_ He should have been tried just like everyone else _ , Riza thought sharply.  _ He didn’t deserve to take his own life _ . None of them did. Most of the tarnished officials with ties to the homunculi had been caught and imprisoned - several faced the firing squad - but a handful had the forethought to commit suicide rather than face justice. 

“ _ Better dead than alive, _ ” General Mustang had said on more than one occasion. Riza knew he was just as angered at their cowardice than she - he just didn’t want to dwell on it.

The difference with Gregor Fare was that his involvement with the homunculi didn’t just affect Amestris on a national scale, but a local one. Potamamie collapsed. As if constructed paper, the local government dissolved into nothing and the town was left in disarray, lost without leadership, haunted by the stain Fare had left.

“ _ We need to get out there and pull that place back together, _ ” Mustang told her. “ _ We can’t heal Ishval when our own land is still bleeding.”  _

And bleeding they were; lawlessness had seeped into the crevices ruptured from the corruption. Word had gotten around that the place for petty crime was in a town in the southeast, but petty crime had evolved into assaults, abuse, and even murder. Many citizens fled, particularly the vulnerable, but just as many remained to fight for their home. The Potamamie people learned that in order to chase out the dogs, they would have to become wolves themselves. Fire fought fire, and after some time, the vagrants were extinguished.

Like an animal beaten too many times, the people here were skittish, distrustful, and fiercely protective. Although suspicious of visitors, it was the military they reserved their gorged hate for. Riza could not blame them. 

“ _ A little late,” _ they jeered when General Mustang’s small squadron settled in.  _ “We could have used you eight weeks ago!” _

“ _ We don’t need you anymore,” “We can take care of ourselves,” “Go back to licking Central boots.” _

“General,” Riza had said their first night in town. “They’re right. We left them to rot while we were too busy in Central.”

“What could we have done?” Mustang asked back. “The military was in disarray. We had to vet every single officer, check every single corner and beneath every dark cloth to find where other corrupters were.”

“I know.” Riza had paced for hours that night. “I just wish we’d known the extent of the damage before this point.”

“I do too, but that’s why we’re here. To fix this.”

The sun had just reached its highest arc in the sky an hour or so ago, and the shadows began to elongate once again. It was fall. The days were warm, but the nights chilly. She eyed the shadows wearily and wondered how often her eyes would be drawn to them this evening.

A crash and a shout forced Riza’s head to snap up, her eyes widening in alert. Something that sounded like cheers, or worse, chants, bounced off the sparse houses like waves. She darted down, her boots clapping, and skidded around the corner.

A gathering of 30 or so men and women hollered forcefully, their fists pumping in the air or their mouths moving in varied shouts. In the midst of them was a young private, no older than 18, being shoved between three large men. One ran his fist across the boy’s jaw. His thin frame pummeled into the thrust of another man’s hands.

As Riza pushed her way over to them, her gun pointed skywards, she heard the angered men shouting at the private. They were yelling the same sentiments that they’d been shouting since the military had arrived, but now their voices held danger in them. Once she got close enough, Riza could see the look in the young man’s eyes. A look of fear. Shock. Confusion. Riza’s heart sunk for his innocence. 

The explosion of her gun forced a communal jolt and glare, the smoking barrel of her .45mm pointed towards the clouds.

“What is going on here?” she demanded. She could not help but feel outnumbered; every pair of downturned eyes were on her. Her wash of anger at the boy’s bleeding lip and tremoring hands allowed her to ignore this.

“What does it look like?” one of the men holding onto the kid snarled, his hand curling around the blue uniform collar. 

“It looks like you’re assaulting my officer.” Riza glanced at the private. Sulner, or Silner, she couldn’t recall, looked back at her in wide-eyed fear. She could practically see his heart beating against his uniform.

“Your officer,” the man spat the word, “was trying to tell me how lost we’d be without your presence.” 

“T-that’s not what I meant, I swear-!” he began, but the angered Potamamian pulled his collar inwards and brought his knee up into the private’s stomach, forcing a pained gasp out from his chest.

Riza reacted quickly, stalking forward in dominance to stand only feet away from the man. A few of his friends closed in on her as if to stop her, but the man held up a hand. They halted. She glanced at them in her peripherals, then back to the man they seemed to acknowledge as their leader.

“Release him,” she commanded quietly. “Trust me, this isn’t the way.”

“No?” He reached into his back pocket and produced a large pocket knife, his wrist flicking it open and pressing it against the private’s throat. “What about this?”

Riza held back a gulp of anxiety. The residents were unstable, this she knew, but downright feral had not been what she was expecting. What if he did kill this poor kid... this private who didn’t know any better? 

“If you have an issue with the occupation of this town, this private first class isn’t the soldier you want to pick a bone with.” Whatever it took, Riza had to save him. “He’s barely out of the academy. He hadn’t even graduated when everything went down with Gregor Fare or Central Command. If you’re looking for seeds of corruption or bitterness, it won’t be in him.”

The man did not move, but neither did the knife at the boy’s throat. Finally, with his stern gaze still firm on Riza, his fingers popped open to release the collar. The private gasped an exclamation and took a stumble backwards. Riza flicked her eyes to his, and with a sharp gesture of her head, told him to run. He did. To Riza’s relief, the crowd did not stop him.

“So if I  _ were _ to assume blackness was in your ranks,” the man started forwards. “I’d look at you?” He peered to look at the rank on her collar. “Captain?”

“No.” Riza kept the gun unholstered, but strictly by her side. “You would look in the past. Everyone involved with the genocide attempt has been found and tried. This unit is here to help.”

He laughed, several of his friends joining in. The hairs on the nape of her neck stood.

“‘We’re here to help’. That’s what I keep hearing.” In his eyes was a putrid, stagnant hate. Riza had seen that look before; a look in her very general, one that she almost lost him to. She had barely managed to talk him down, a man she’d known her entire life. This stranger before her? This man who saw her uniform as a symbol for hate and death?

She felt her pulse quicken.

“Then let us show you,” she implored, ignoring the bead of sweat rolling down her temple. “We’ve hardly been here for three days.”

“Our people died, Captain. Died.” His voice was anchored in detestation. “Because you and that rat-faced kid weren’t here.” 

He pointed the knife at her. 

“Because your _precious_ _military_ was too busy fondling monsters and allowing greed to nearly kill us all, and then because you were _caught doing it_ , we died.” Riza glanced around as people’s voices began to cheer at his words. “Friends. People I’d known my entire life. Killed by criminals, or moved away forever because of it. It was like the fucking wild west out here, Captain, _and now! Now that we’ve fixed it ourselves! You show up!”_

Whoops and shouts erupted. A couple small stones hit her shoes as the crowd’s energy increased. Riza took a step backwards from the knife inching closer to her, but her back hit the sturdy build of a tanned man who grabbed her arms. The crowd suddenly enveloped her and she lifted her gun upward, its barrel briefly pointed at the leader glaring at her blindly, but she consciously lifted it above her head and emptied two rounds. One the third, the man behind her wrestled her arm backwards and forced the gun to drop clumsily to the road. 

Riza struggled against the man behind her, but his burly arms held strong. She called out as she fought, wriggling her body and shoulders violently to escape the hold, but Riza quickly realized that she’d found herself in deep, sudden danger. The leader stepped in front of her and rested the knife against her jaw.

“I’m tired of you people ruining  _ my _ people’s lives. We tried to warn you all when you came rolling in here. We tried to growl, snap, and lunge, but you wouldn’t take the hint. Well now it’s time you realize that we’re not just bark, Captain. My people fucking bite.”

Riza brought her boot up and swung it outwards, knocking the knife out of his hand deftly. The quickness and dexterity shocked him so much that in another situation, Riza could have laughed, but his right knuckles blasting her left temple forced her to forget. The man imprisoning her released her arms and she collapsed to the ground. Riza tried to scramble to her feet, a lie to herself that she could regain any amount of control of her position, but her attacker’s shin slammed against the side of her leg and forced her to her knees. She cried out.

“It’s time for Amestris to learn--” he began before plummeting his foot into her side to catapult her backwards to the ground. “That just because it’s a military power doesn’t mean the military has power over us! We have been set aflame by the military for the last time!” His words reeked of promise, and Riza knew he spoke with utter conviction.

“Tie her up!” he decreed. They hollered in response and someone hauled her to her feet. She weakly struggled against them as they dragged her away, but her energy had been wiped with every blow dealt.

A tall wooden pole was erected at a derelict crossroads a few hundred meters away. Although her head was swimming, Riza recognized the area as the vacant plaza. A dreary place that was always empty. The pole was chipped and stained brown, and Riza wondered if that pole had gained infamy for the criminals the townspeople had caught, tormented, and killed.

“You’re making a mistake doing thi--” Her words cut off as a few men slammed her against the pole, her head cracking backwards at the force. There was another wooden plate perpendicular to the pole, thick nails impaling it all the way through so that the sharp ends were poking into Riza’s back. She shouted and fussed against the hands grabbing her, but the best she did was annoy them as they forced her arms backwards and over the plate. Riza screamed at the tension in her shoulders as they tied knots around her wrists and anchored the rope to the pole. She could not move, fight, or even sink to the ground like her legs begged her to do.

“Listen to me,” she implored the leader as he stalked up to her, his face lined with loathing. She tasted blood as it dripped down her face and into her mouth. “I am not a murderer here to kill you--”

“Not a murderer?” he dared. “Are you sure about that? You’re about old enough to have fought in the civil war, right?” At the shocked look on her face, he smiled without humor. “That’s what I thought. Your military killed your own people. Then your military tried to kill everyone. Then two months later, that same military comes marching into  _ my  _ home with what, innocent intentions? But let me guess -  _ you’re just here to help _ .” 

He reached forward and ripped the rank off of her collar.

“ _ You ruined our lives _ .” He threw it to the ground and smothered it with his shoe. “ _ So I’m going to ruin yours.” _

* * *

“Okay, so you’re telling me that people in Cretos cook rice with salt water.” Roy smirked, his hands crossing over his chest. Sgt. Bryant laughed loudly.

“Yes!” he said enthusiastically. “I’m telling you, I spent two years stationed on the border. I know it sounds crazy but I can’t make this up.”

“You’re pulling my strings, Bryant, there’s no way they do that. That’s disgusting.”

“General, I am not lying!”

“If you say that again I’m gonna fire you for medical instability.”

Bryant laughed again and opened his mouth to respond, but a communications officer stepped into the musky office and nodded to them both. She saw Falman in the corner, silent as ever, and curtly extended a greeting to him.

“Sorry to intrude, General, but I have important news.”

“It’s nothing, Lieutenant, I welcome the interruption.” He smiled when Bryant rolled his eyes. “What do you need?”

“There are some disturbing reports of an angry gathering in the third quarter.”

“Oh?” The smile wilted and Roy leaned forward in his chair. “Tell me.”

“It’s preliminary. The report came from a child one of the officer’s spoke to in passing”

“And what did they say?”

“Nothing much, sir. Just that a man was preaching words against our presence to a crowd and riling them up.” 

Roy sighed loudly and folded his hands together. He feared his charm wouldn’t win these people over like it could so many others, and truth be told, it worried him greatly. The town was in worse shape than any of them had expected, and the tension was so tight he feared it may snap. “Well,” he said finally. “I don’t see how us breaking that up would do us any favors, so just see if you can find out more and--”

“ _ GENERAL!”  _ a panicked voice screamed from the hall. Roy perked up in alarm just as a young man came stumbling around the corner, practically knocking into the communications officer’s radio. “General! General I-I-I, there’s,” the young man stuttered, his breaths labored and heaving as he tried to catch his breath. The physical appearance of the soldier brought Roy slowly to his feet.

“Private, what the hell is going on?” he asked, his stomach suddenly queasy. The private was bleeding from his lip and hairline, his jaw bruised and clearly beaten. The man struggled to regain his composure.

“General, Private Silner reporting from the third quarter,” he forced between breaths. “I was attacked by a group, sir, and--”

“Attacked?” Roy pressed, startled. 

“Yes sir, I...I was attacked.”

Roy’s eyes were wide. He felt Falman stiffen in his chair. “But they let you go?” He asked the question because he wanted to believe it, but his heart sank when the private shook his head.

“No, General, sir...Captain Hawkeye must have heard the commotion. She convinced them to release me.”

Roy’s stomach lurched.

Since the Promised Day, Roy mentally struggled with his relationship with his adjutant, and not in the way he would have liked. Rather, he felt a sense of protection over her he hadn’t had before. Roy always worried for Hawkeye, but to practically obsess over her safety had never, ever been an issue. He tried to control his need to be near her. He tried to reign in his anxieties, to convince himself that he couldn’t put a leash on her. Yet still, he’d dream of her death. Of an alternate reality where that little girl hadn’t been down in those tunnels, and Hawkeye bled out in his arms.

_ The threat to us and the nation has been extinguished,  _ he’d tell himself to fall back asleep.  _ She is safer now than she’s ever been. _

“And you left her?” he asked the private, his voice two shades quieter. There was suddenly a crackle of radio static.

_ “Lieutenant Limmer, do you copy?” _

Every pair of eyes turned to the communications officer. She glanced between the men, likely fearing that something horribly relevant was about to be relayed to her, and reached for the radio.

“Limmer here, go ahead.”

“We’re getting reports from bystanders that an officer is being detained off Papil and Lily roads, at the plaza. They are bound and their life is at risk. This has become--”

The voice on the radio faded as Roy bolted down the hall and out from the shabby building.

The cobblestones beneath Roy’s sprint seemed to multiply at every step. 

_ They are bound, their life is at risk,  _ they’d said,  _ and it is your fault _ .

He heard the crowd before he saw them, hissing, sneering, shouting. Roy tugged on his gloves as he skidded into the plaza, and their words became clear. Kill them all, kill them all, kill them all…

_ No _ , he thought as he shoved aside layers of townsfolk.  _ She can’t be killed, not after all this, not here. _

His fingers wrapped around the shoulder of the last person blocking his vision and he thrust them aside with such force that they may have fallen over. He wouldn’t know. His eyes were fixed on Hawkeye’s paling face. She was constrained to a pole by rope, her skin wet with blood, with a hand wrapped around her throat that was squeezing tight enough to kill.

Roy’s middle finger pressed dangerously against his thumb by instinct, but he forced himself to relieve the pressure. 

“Hey meathead!” he shouted, his head on fire. The man’s gaze, boring holes into Hawkeye’s fluttering eyes, suddenly looked to him. “Release my captain.  _ Now. _ ” His voice quivered as he continued to force back his need to alchemize. The man’s head cocked as if to accept the challenge and his lip turned upwards in a snarl.

“Then how would she die.” It was not a question, but a statement. Roy dared another look at Hawkeye’s face, begging her to hold on, but her body was beginning to still. Dread overwhelmed him, but still he forced back his instinct. 

“It isn’t personal, General.” The man’s smile was vacant. “It could be you on this pole, or that private I’d had earlier. It isn’t about her - It’s about sending you deaf dogs a message.”

“Oh?” Roy’s body was steaming, wild rage building in his chest. “And what message is that?”

Her head was tilting backwards, the muscles in her body convulsing as she tried desperately for air...

“No matter what you do, no matter how many times you try and pretend that you’re here to help, we will  _ never, ever  _ trust Amestris!” The crowd screamed. “Because if we do, we will die again! And better her than us!”

“ _ And do you have any idea who’s throat that is under your hand?!”  _ Roy bellowed. “ _ Do you know whose life you’re taking?” _

The man laughed an eerie, cruel laugh, but Roy continued before he could open his mouth to retaliate. 

“ _ Riza Hawkeye, a soldier in the rebellion. Surely you’ve heard of her.” _

The crowd suddenly silenced, and the look on the man’s face was wiped clean. His shock had him frozen.

“ _ Release her!”  _ Roy screamed. 

His fingers unclasped, but his hand lingered as if unsure of what it was doing. Hawkeye’s head lolled forward a moment, and Roy felt terror that he’d been too late, but she quickly inhaled a painful breath and began coughing violently. The man reached for her shirt and pulled it down past her neck.

Roy couldn’t see the scar from where he stood, but he knew the man could. He took several steps backwards from her, visibly disturbed, even ashamed, at what he’d done.

The revelations brought out by the battle two months ago had rattled the nation, by default, and it had left citizens and innocent soldiers vehemently demanding of what had been happening behind closed doors. Everyone involved in the battle agreed that secrets had been what brought Amestris to such a place, and they released every detail. The journalists published the accounts, including the names of those involved - evil, or not. Hawkeye hated that everyone knew her name and what had happened to her. 

Little do she or Roy know that it would save her life.

“She had a gun, did she not?” He forced his voice to a calmer, albeit still fierce, place, trying his best to ignore her incessant coughing. “A gun she could have used to defend herself, at any point before you did this to her? A gun she could have used to  _ kill  _ you?”

The man’s face was wrought with hesitation, his mouth agape and his brow upturned. He did not respond.

“You think the military is here to hurt you. You think the military can’t be trusted - fine, I get it. You’ve been wounded. You have a right to be wary.” Roy finally began walking towards him, bridging the gap between him and his still recovering captain. “But that woman nearly died two months ago to do just the opposite that you charged her for - many of us did. Far too many for me to name. The military betrayed us all, but the military is also what fought back. Entire  _ squadrons _ retaliated.”

When he became close enough to the man, he eyed him dangerously then turned for Hawkeye. With two quiet snaps, he broke her bonds and she fell into his arms. The languor in her made Roy’s breath hitch, but he supported her as she forced herself to stand. Roy turned back to the still silent man.

“Get out of my sight. Every last one of you.”

He wrapped his arm around Hawkeye’s back and nestled his hand beneath her shoulder for leverage, his other hand holding onto her forearm. He guided them away. The crowd parted silently to let them pass.

“Charge me.”

Roy stopped, turning his chin over his shoulder. The man spoke again.

“Charge me for what I’ve done.”

Roy thought for a moment, then replied,

“I should, shouldn’t I?” Then he kept moving forward. Hawkeye seemed to have regained some of her strength but leaned into him heavily. Roy tried not to grasp her too forcefully, but the relief of feeling her beneath his grip made him zealous. 

Hawkeye tried to keep up her pace, but once they were far enough away to be alone, Roy felt her begin to falter.

“Captain…”

“I-I’m alright, I just need a moment…”

Her stubbornness be damned. He had half a mind to sweep her into his arms and carry her, but she’d be humiliated by it.  _ Afterall,  _ he thought bitterly to himself,  _ it was her throat that was nearly crushed, not her legs _ .

“Let’s sit,” he said quietly, bringing her to shade offered by an abandoned qdoba. Slowly, supporting her body, he lowered them to the dirt. Close enough to visualize, quiet enough to focus, Roy could see the beating she must have taken while Roy had been joking with the sergeant in the office. He closed his eyes, his hand balling into a fist temporarily. It softed, opened, and lifted to gently hold back of her head. He brought her into him and wrapped his arms around her in an embrace. To his surprise, she melted into it, bringing her own arm around to return it. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her yellow hair. “I’m sorry.”

She said nothing, but Roy felt her hand tighten at his back. 

Roy spoke with Grumman over the next few days, discussing options. Grumman was incessant that the guilty man be charged appropriately, but Roy talked him out of it. Roy called for him to be charged too, but then Hawkeye talked  _ him _ out of it.

“I didn’t fire my weapon for the same reason you didn’t melt anyone. We can’t foul them anymore than we already have.”

“He was seconds away from  _ killing you. _ ”

“In the name of protecting his people, yes, he would have.” 

The day after the incident, the town suddenly dropped all leers. Cautious smiles and waves came from them. Several days after that, many of them suddenly knew officers by name. By the end of a few weeks, with the help of Roy, Hawkeye, and the rest of the soldiers, a new municipal government was formed. Ruins were cleared and a few parks built. The graffiti, waste, and rubble of the old town was cleared to let the new one rise from its ashes. 

Hawkeye spent more of her time indoors. Now that the town knew she and the general were the “heroes” of the Promised Day, she avoided the citizens. Roy couldn’t blame her. They looked to her especially as some sort of martyr because of the incident in the plaza. 

Roy watched her work at her desk. The office still hadn’t been cleaned since they arrived, and dust hung in the air, lit up by the sun streaming through the window blinds. Everyone had left for the train station. Their work here was done. She and Roy would be leaving momentarily after she finished up one of the last reports.

Neither she nor Roy had seen the man that nearly took her life. Roy assumed he was holed up in his house, haunted. After all, he’d nearly become that very thing he so resented; corrupt. Gregor Fare had been corrupted by some malicious emotion, but the man had been corrupted by vengeance. Although Roy could never forget what he’d done to his captain, he could understand the feeling of overwhelming, murderous rage. Roy had been tempted by it himself. 

Her hair was still long, clipped up against the base of her skull. Her pen scratched against paper. She had mentioned cutting it soon.

Grumman had told him that their next assignment was Ishval. The place they’d been meaning to get back to for years, the place they  _ were  _ guilty of. The place where the people had every single right to slit their throats in their sleep.

Roy wondered how he would be able to let this woman out of his sight for even a moment in that place.


End file.
